Demographics

Friday

Matthew Parris

Matthew Parris, Stephen J. Shaw, Henry Jeffreys, Tessa Dunlop and Angus Colwell

31 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Matthew Parris reflects on the gay rights movement in the UK; faced with Britain’s demographic declines, Stephen J. Shaw argues that Britain needs to recover a sense of ‘futurehood’; Henry Jeffreys makes the case for disposing of wine lists; Tessa Dunlop reviews Valentine Low’s Power and the Palace: The Inside Story of the Monarchy and 10 Downing Street; and, Angus Colwell reviews a new podcast on David Bowie from BBC Sounds.  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Wednesday

Ryan Girdusky

The Democrats have a voter problem

From our US edition

Data scientist David Shor has a message for Democrats: “Your problem with young men is worse than you think.” Shor is a respected and highly reputable Democratic data guru. He has released his autopsy on the 2024 election and why Kamala Harris lost. Unlike previous analysis, which primarily used exit polling, Shor’s company Blue Rose Research looked at polls, precinct-level returns and voter-file data to figure out who turned on the Democrats – and why. Democrats comforted themselves in the wake of their election loss by insisting that if more people had voted, Harris would have been sworn in as the 47th president. For decades it’s been true that Democrats win high-turnout elections while Republicans win votes with a smaller turnout.

democrats

Sunday

Louise Perry

Modernity is making you sterile

Cassava is a woody shrub native to South America. For people living in drought-prone tropical regions, it is a godsend: delicious, calorie-dense, and highly productive. The indigenous peoples of the Americas who first cultivated cassava are reliant on it and have developed an arduous, days-long process of preparation that involves scraping, grating, washing, and boiling the plant before it is eaten. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Portuguese introduced cassava to the Old World. But they did not import the ancient methods of processing, assuming that indigenous people were wasting their time. Progress swats away benevolent traditions because the usefulness of traditions can be subtle and hard to understand We do not always know why we do the things we do.